From A Squid A Day. WARNING: That squid you’re eating may be about to have sex with your mouth.
You need to know this. Because probably you don’t have enough to worry about.
I’m here today to talk about a very strange paper: Penetration of the oral mucosa by parasite-like sperm bags of squid: a case report in a Korean woman.
This study, published in February in the Journal of Parasitology (?!), presents the tale of a woman eating squid who experienced “severe pain” and a “pricking, foreign-body sensation” in her mouth. A doctor found and removed “twelve small, white spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms” from her tongue, cheek, and gums.
These foreign bodies were subsequently identified as squid spermatophores, which I would like to point out are not “organisms” in any way. A squid, a human, a tree—those are organisms. A spermatophore is like a cup of semen—nothing more than an aggregation of gametes. And “bug-like”? Spermatophores don’t have legs. Or eyes. Or exoskeletons.
But that’s not to say they aren’t complex structures. (That’s why squid researchers tend to translate “spermatophore” as spermpackage rather than sperm bag.) Each spermatophore includes an ejaculatory apparatus, which can expel the sperm mass quite forcefully, and a cement body for attachment. Of course, neither of those is a needle or a knife—the sort of thing you’d expect to need for actual implantation (into either a female squid or a human mouth). I’ve written a bit about this mystery before. As it turns out, no one is quite sure how spermatophores implant themselves into skin.
But whatever the details, it’s happened to humans more than once. An earlier case study reports “sperm stings” from consumption of raw squid, but the recent Journal of Parasitology paper is the first report I’ve seen of spermatophore activity in a cooked squid (parboiled, to be specific). That’s … quite impressive, actually.
There’s more over at
http://www.science20.com/squid_day/squid_your_plate_could_inseminate_your_mouth-91085
(This is not a squid. I just put up the painting of Cthulhu to make it a bit more scary.)
Those creepy Japanese sex monster cartoons are actually public service announcements paid for by tax dollars. THE JAPANESE ARE TRYING TO SAVE YOUR LIVES.
